WITNESS TO D-DAY

Robert Watson was blown ashore on Omaha Beach

Robert L. Watson knows exactly what time he hit Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944: 7:27 a.m.

“That’s when my watch stopped,” he said.

Watson, now an 87-year-old San Marcos resident, was part of the U.S. Navy’s Sixth Beach Battalion. As a beach master, his job was to take control of a quarter-mile-wide swath of Omaha Beach.

First, though, he had to get there.

Watson was in a landing craft that was hit before it reached the shore. The impact tore his left leg and stopped his watch. Watson sank below the waves, but a flotation device brought him bobbing back to the surface.

He grabbed a rope on the side of another vessel and was towed to shore.

“There’s only one word to describe the beach,” he said. “It was absolute, total chaos.”